


the rolling in the graves

by vounoura



Series: but my heart's in atrophy [1]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Angst, F/F, the Watcher: is this real life.jpg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 14:42:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19814437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vounoura/pseuds/vounoura
Summary: “I'd choose you,” Iovara says, candlelight in her eyes, voice like spun gold. Sarahel thinks she could catch the stars in them, find the depths of dreams. “Always.”Her words feel like poison, dropping like coals through her chest, lodging somewhere deep into her gut. Sarahel wants to vomit with the guilt but instead of bile all that remains is the faint sensation of fingertips ghosting over the planes of her face.





	the rolling in the graves

**Author's Note:**

> returns from the dead w/ smth that isn't TES lol oops

“ _So my love returns to me_ ,” Iovara says, her voice ringing around her adra prison like the tolling of a bell. “ _At last_.”

A thousand memories bounce around her skull at the sound, hazy and barely cohesive, splitting like water if she focuses on them too much. Fire and blood, rain, a wheel - at the centre of it all stands _her_ , eternal and unbending, broken but still horrifically beautiful.

Her face blends between perfect and fire-touched, battered, broken. Sarahel feels her chest twist.

( _Iovara, Iovara, Iovara_. Sarahel feels her soul scream the name like a mantra, batting about her skull with its beat. _Iovara, Iovara, Iovara_.

With every mention she feels a little more empty, a little more lost. _Iovara, Iovara, Iovara_ , her soul screams, her mind pulled between broken bones and the sweet sensation of a mouth slipping over hers.)

She hears a voice that isn't hers (but it _is_ , isn't it? It rings in her soul with all the familiarity of a bell), hazy and indistinct, curling around her ears. She grinds her palms into the lobes, pulls at earrings and at her hair so the pain will focus her, but it's not enough.

(“ _I'd choose you_ ,” Iovara says, candlelight in her eyes, voice like spun gold. Sarahel thinks she could catch the stars in them, find the depths of dreams. “ _Always_.”

Her words feel like poison, dropping like coals through her chest, lodging somewhere deep into her gut. Sarahel wants to vomit with the guilt but instead of bile all that remains is the faint sensation of fingertips ghosting over the planes of her face.)

Screaming. The blood. Iovara sits broken yet still defiant upon a bloodied wheel. _I want to hear one from you_. Sarahel wonders if tearing her own eyes out will rid her of the memory, and her fingers twitch before she balls them into fists tight enough for her fingers to draw blood from her palms.

(Her emotions are a storm raging behind her ribcage. She switches between nauseous guilt and burning passion and an impossible depth of love so quickly she can't even identify who or what she is from one moment to the next. The real world and Engwith blend together in her vision into an indistinct mosaic she cannot identify the details of.

“ _I'm sorry_ ,” Is what escapes from behind her teeth, wet with tears she didn't know were there - she kind of wants to laugh, because Sarahel can’t remember the last time she cried. The apology bursts from her lungs, whispered to the stones because she's not _possibly_ worthy to look upon the woman she tossed into darkness, repeated with the same intensity that Iovara’s name beats within her soul.

(She wants Iovara to scream, to yell, to do _anything_ other than look down at her with that melancholic, apologetic expression of hers. It's the same one she gave her - she, _them_ \- when she had returned from the Inquisition with regret on her lips, as if she were someone still worthy of forgiveness. Still worthy of being _loved_ despite it all.

 _Be angry with me_ , Sarahel wants to scream, _didn't I kill you?_ But Iovara keeps looking at her with that expression of forgiveness and untainted _love_ and it makes her feel too small for her own skin.

 _I killed you_ , she wants to cry. _Why do you still love me?_ )

She thinks she feels fingers in her hair, nails scraping gently against her scalp, but whether real or imagined she cannot tell. Sarahel feels hands at her sides - real ones, Edér, Aloth, Kana - but they feel like ghosts.

(Iovara, however, feels like fire, ever-burning in her intensity.

And if Iovara is the fire, then she is the kindling.)

**Author's Note:**

> anyways I love Iovara and the fact that she still loves you is oof
> 
> (title is from NFWMB.)


End file.
